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Two canopies, four elevations and one high-altitude sun. What we have worked out about shading a house here — the reasoning, the honest catch on every product, and the five things we cannot answer until we are standing at your window.
01 — The brief
William Grey Rattray bought the farm Klipfontein in 1891 and named its pieces after Blairgowrie, the Scottish town he came from. Craighall's streets took Scottish family names; Craighall Park's took English dukes — Somerset, Buckingham, Lancaster. Plots sold by leasehold from 1902 and freehold from 1911, and in 1919 the place was still a day from town by horse and cart.
None of that was aimed at the sun. It was set by a farm boundary and a surveyor, so which side of Buckingham your stand falls on decides whether the lounge glass takes the December overhead or the four-o'clock west.
Two things land on top of that accident. The trees: gums well over a hundred years old, some more than six metres round, left from when eucalyptus was planted here to feed the mines with timber poles. And what people build now — on stands of roughly 1,000 to 2,000 square metres, most work in this suburb is a glass-walled room grafted onto a house that has stood for decades.
So the honest answer here is almost never one specification for the house. It is one per window.
02 — The light
Craighall Park has no weather station of its own, so everything below is Johannesburg-wide and we say so.
Roughly 784 mm of rain a year, almost all of it October to March as downpours and thunderstorms, and winter minima near 0 °C with light frost possible. Hail matters more than most people budget for: satellite work published in 2023 puts Gauteng at about 35 hail events a year across 23 hail days, running mid-November to February, with the busiest hour at four to five in the afternoon — precisely when an awning is out. That is an argument for a retractable product you can genuinely retract, not an argument for fear.
The World Health Organization's figure is simple: UV rises about 10% per 1,000 m. At roughly 1,700 m a window here takes meaningfully more of it than the same window at the coast, and thin cloud barely helps — it can scatter more down at you. Ultraviolet breaks the molecular bonds in fabric dyes, and heat and moisture speed that up, so fabric choice on a west window is a durability decision as much as a light one.
03 — The canopy
This is the part particular to this suburb, and it is why two windows four metres apart on one wall can need different answers.
Eucalyptus is evergreen — its leaves are persistent, not shed in autumn. A window under one of Craighall Park's century-old gums is in shade all year, and the complaint in that room is usually the opposite of glare. It is gloom. Fit a heavy blockout there because the plan says "west" and you have built a cave. Under a permanent gum the right move is normally a fabric that passes the filtered light, closing down only when you want it closed.
Jacaranda is deciduous — a 7 to 12 metre tree that drops its canopy. It is in full leaf October to March, the months the sun is nearly overhead and the roof, not the wall, takes the load. It is bare in June and July, when the sun sits at 40° due north and comes in almost horizontally at the glass. Generous when you least need it; gone when the low sun is at its worst. A beautiful tree and a hopeless blind.
Dappled light is still direct light. Leaf shadow moves all day, thins whenever a branch does, and disappears the season after a prune.
04 — Orientation
Stand in the room at four in the afternoon in February. That one moment tells you more than a floor plan will.
Easiest to solve
At 87° in December the sun is almost straight above the wall, so an eave, veranda roof or fixed canopy throws its shadow nearly straight down and shades the whole opening — then at 40° in June the same projection lets the winter sun in to warm the room. That is the geometry SANS 10400-XA leans on for new builds, and it works as well on a 1930s house. Where the eave already exists, north is often a light-and-privacy brief rather than a heat one, which is cheaper.
The expensive one
The sun sets between 243° in December and 295° in June, and by then it is low: it arrives under the eave, horizontally, at the hottest hour. Overhead projections do almost nothing. An interior blind stops the light, but the glass has already absorbed the energy and radiates it inward. Stopping it outside the pane is the only way to make the room genuinely cooler — which is why the standard treats external devices as the serious answer.
Half the penalty
The mirror image, from 05:13 in midsummer on a bearing of 116°. Just as low and just as horizontal, but the building fabric is still cool from the night, so heat is rarely the complaint. What people report is glare on a screen, washed-out breakfast light and waking at five — usually an indoor sunscreen or day-night answer rather than an external one. That is a real saving, and worth saying out loud.
Not immune
Because midsummer sunrise (116°) and sunset (243°) both sit south of the true east–west line, a south wall does take low direct sun early and late in December, then essentially none through winter. South rooms are also the likeliest to sit under a permanent gum, so they can be the gloomiest in the house: the brief is often to add usable light and keep privacy, not to subtract heat.
Optional
Tell us which rooms or elevations are the problem and we will annotate this against your actual windows and email it back. A piece of writing, not a sales visit — nobody phones you about it.
The page stays free and open either way. There is no gated version and nothing held back.
05 — The specification
Every one of these is right somewhere in this suburb and wrong somewhere else. Tap "put it on my sizing sheet" and it is filled in for you further down the page — nothing to retype.
A single flat sheet on a tube — no folds, no stacking. Sunscreen mesh cuts glare and UV while keeping the garden view, which makes it the default on garden-facing glass here. Blockout is the same mechanism with an opaque fabric, for bedrooms.
Alternating sheer and solid bands on one tube, so the blind runs from view-through to private without swapping fabric. On an east window — glare and early waking rather than heat — this often does the whole job alone.
Pleated fabric folded into hexagonal cells that trap still air against the glass. That trapped air is real insulation, which earns its place against a winter minimum near 0 °C, and over a garage or under a new double-volume ceiling. Cordless versions leave nothing hanging.
Tiltable slats do something no roller can: throw light up at the ceiling while keeping the sightline out at eye level. That is genuinely useful in a gloomy room under a permanent gum. Timber suits older rooms with real proportions; aluminium is the moisture-proof pick for a scullery or bathroom.
The west-elevation answer. Both stop the sun outside the glass, so the pane never absorbs the energy — the whole difference between a cooler room and a darker one. External venetians keep a tilted view out; roller shutters are rigid aluminium slats rolling down from a headbox, the most complete shading control available on a hard elevation.
The blind disappears into a ceiling pocket and the room reads as bare glass when it is up. Because so much work here is a new room grafted onto an old house, we can often plan the box in while the ceiling is still open — nearly free at that moment, expensive later.
An awning shades the patio without a post in the way, so the space under it stays usable. A zip screen runs in side channels and closes the outdoor room down against wind, dust and early-evening insects — useful on gardens backing onto the Delta Park greenbelt.
On a reachable window this is a comfort upgrade and we will say so. On a wide extension slider, a double-volume void or an outdoor awning it is close to essential — and in a house with small children it is the safest option going, because there is no cord at all. Timed closing is also the only way a west blind is reliably down before the room heats up.
06 — Heritage
Section 34 of the National Heritage Resources Act says no person may alter or demolish any structure, or part of one, older than sixty years without a permit from the provincial heritage authority. Craighall Park's own residents' association puts it plainly on its heritage page: if your building is older than sixty years and you want to alter, extend or demolish it, you must first get approval from the Provincial Heritage Resources Authority – Gauteng, and that covers internal as well as external alterations.
The association is equally clear about its own role: "PHRAG is the decision-maker" and "we are not a statutory authority." The CRA comments at community level on streetscape context, mature trees and verges, construction impact on neighbours and the lawful sequencing of approvals — balance rather than blocking sensible improvements, because in a garden suburb the value sits in the collective feel, the canopy and the scale.
What that means for blinds, honestly:
07 — The limits of a web page
Everything above is true and useful. None of it becomes a firm specification for your house without these five — and anyone who says otherwise is guessing.
An inside fit needs depth enough for the tube or headrail without the fabric fouling a handle or stay. Older openings here are often a few millimetres out of square side to side, which changes the fit and sometimes the whole mounting decision.
Steel casement, timber, aluminium, brick, plaster over lath, or a new cavity wall on the extension — each takes a different fixing and carries a different weight. A wide venetian or an awning cassette is not a light thing.
Wind is the thing no website can tell you. A patio open to the Delta Park greenbelt behaves nothing like a courtyard sheltered by a wall and a century-old gum — and that decides the wind sensor, the zip screen and the fixings.
Motorisation lives or dies on a cable route to the head of the opening. Easy in a new extension; in a 1930s wall it may mean chasing, a surface route we would both hate, or a rechargeable motor. Five minutes to answer on site, impossible online.
Whether the canopy over that window is an evergreen gum or a deciduous jacaranda changes the specification — and so does how high the crown sits and where it has been pruned. We would rather stand in the room at the difficult hour than guess from a satellite photo.
08 — Two ways forward
Both are free, neither commits you to anything, and the first is the better answer for almost everybody.
A consultant comes to the house with samples, measures every opening properly, reads the real light in each room at the hour that matters, and follows up with an itemised written quote per window. Free, no obligation, and the only way to get exact pricing.
Book the free measureOur consultant does five to six measures a week across this area, so the diary fills early — worth booking ahead if you need a particular day.
Want a ballpark before anyone comes out? Pop rough sizes into the sizing sheet below and we will send a budget range by the next working day. Not sure how to measure? Leave it — our consultant measures for free, and that is where the exact per-window pricing comes from either way.
Nothing here is compulsory — it is just quicker for people who would rather see a number before they see a person.
Rough is fine — this is a budget range, not a manufacturing order. Anything you tapped in the chapter above is already filled in. Widths and drops in millimetres, at the widest and longest points of the opening.
| Room | Width (mm) | Drop (mm) | Inside or outside the reveal | Product | Remove |
|---|
Nothing on the sheet yet — and that is completely fine.
09 — The close
One visit does most of the job: exact sizes, samples judged in your own light, a read of each room, and a written per-window quote afterwards. No showroom trek, no pressure calls.
Anything on the sizing sheet above rides along with this form automatically. If you skipped it, that is completely fine too.
Still just researching? Say so in the timeframe box. We will note it and leave you alone — no call, no chasing — and this Field Book stays here for whenever you come back.
Sources
Sun-path and climate figures are Johannesburg-wide; Craighall Park has no station of its own. Nothing here is a price, a lead time, or a claim about anybody else.
Our full working notes, including the things we could not verify and deliberately left out of this page, sit behind the same research. Where a claim is our own specification opinion rather than a sourced fact, we have written it that way.